Computer users frequently rely on search engines to identify businesses or resources satisfying the users' individual interests. For example, if a user is interested in reading about the latest celebrity gossip, the user may submit a query to a search engine that includes one or more keywords or phrases, such as the celebrity's name, the word “gossip,” and so on. Typically, a search engine responds to a user query with several results (e.g., web pages), which are presented to the user in an order defined by the search engine. To be included within a search engine's search results, a web page must be accessible to the search engine. That is, the search engine must be able to discover the web page, store its address (e.g., URL), retrieve its contents (e.g., HTML data, metadata, etc.), and analyze/index the retrieved contents. After a web page has been indexed, the search engine determines whether the page will be included in a response to a particular keyword or phrase and, if so, in what order (i.e., rank) the page is presented. For example, some search engines may increase the rank of a web page when that page includes the queried keywords within the text or metadata (e.g., tags) of the page.
Users' reliance on (and habitual use of) search engines has prompted many businesses to invest resources in improving their relative ranking within search results for particular keywords or phrases associated with their business, products, targeted users, etc. Typically, by improving a website's search result rank, the user base of the website increases. Moreover, by increasing a website's user base, the website tends to generate more revenue for their business, for example, through sales, advertising, and/or investors. Indeed, businesses continue to invest an ever-increasing amount of resources in such “search engine optimization” activities. The term “search engine optimization” (“SEO”) generally refers to a process of improving the position (i.e., rank) of a web page within search results that are presented to a user in response to a query containing particular keywords or phrases, thereby increasing the number of users directed to the website.
Conventional SEO strategies have centered on keyword density (e.g., including as many keywords as possible within web page titles, metadata, headers, etc.), URL character length, page size, navigation, reducing dynamic content, among others. However, algorithms for indexing and ranking search results tend to vary among search engines. Additionally, in order to prevent website operators from unfairly manipulating search results, such algorithms are generally kept secret. Moreover, search engine operators frequently update their algorithms, not only to prevent website operators from manipulating search results (such as by “keyword stuffing”), but also to improve the quality of the search results presented to its users. As a result, conventional search engine optimizations tend to be short-lived, thereby requiring more-and-more resources to be invested to develop, implement, and test new SEO strategies.
Some website operators have taken a different approach to SEO. Recognizing that search engines typically rank web pages based on their contents, some operations have focused their SEO resources on content generation to “organically” improve their rank, instead of endlessly attempting to “outsmart” the search engine. For example, such operators spend their SEO resources generating content that is “keyword dense” for particular keywords or phrases that will likely be used by potential users or users that the operator is targeting. However, content generation is expensive. For example, content generation may be prohibitively expensive (in the context of SEO activities) when a business provides a diverse array of products and/or services that may be targeted to different users segments. Moreover, generated content may become obsolete, for example, as the products and/or services offered by businesses change overtime.
Nevertheless, to facilitate content generation, a website operator may obtain a content management system (“CMS”), which is used by its developers to create web pages that are dynamically built on the fly (e.g., to include newly generated content) by inserting within such web pages queries to a database operated by the website operator. That is, website operators implement a CMS to reduce the barriers associated with publishing generated content. Examples of content management systems are provided by Interwoven Inc. of San Jose, Calif., and Vignette of Austin, Tex. Although content management systems tend reduce some costs associated with static content generation, such systems must be integrated with the operator's website and require substantial technical training and developer expertise. Also, such systems operate within an enterprise, behind the firewall of that enterprise. As a result, contribution of generated content is limited to individuals within the enterprise. Moreover, existing content management systems require the website operators to pay for content generation or risk their generated content growing stale over time.
The need exists for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as one that provides additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.